More than 1m getting welfare payments

WELFARE payments have increased dramatically, despite the economic boom of recent years, with more than one million people now in receipt of State supports.

Figures published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that the number of people getting the old age pension grew by 30% between 1999 and 2006, while the number of recipients of illness, disability and caring payments leapt by 43%.

In money terms, expenditure on social welfare payments more than doubled during that time, leaping by 116%. There are just over one million people — almost a quarter of the population — in receipt of a weekly welfare payment.

This is despite a fall of 16% in the number of people receiving unemployment supports in the same period.

Some of the increases can be attributed to the increase in the population at large, which grew by 8.2% in the four-year period between 2002 and 2006 alone, bringing the total head count to 4,239,848.

A gradual ageing of the population is also contributing to welfare dependency, as the average age was 35 years and 36 days in 2002, but had grown to 35 years and 219 by last year.

Some expansion of the range of welfare payments also took place between the years examined. For example, the Farm Assist and Widowed Parents’ Payment were introduced in 1999 and the Carers’ Benefit came in during 2000.

Overall, last year, the greatest single categories of welfare payments were for older people, who accounted for 24% of expenditure on payments; illness, disability and caring (18%); child-related, but excluding child benefit, (17%) and widows, widowers and one-parent families (16%).

The figures come from the CSO’s statistical yearbook for 2006, which gives an overview of the country from a facts and figures point of view. For every day last year, for example, there were 176 births, 75 deaths, 60 weddings and nine divorces.

As a population, we’re outnumbered three to one by cattle and sheep, 12.9 million of whom roam the country’s pastureland. In case that conjures images of abundance in agriculture, however, there are striking statistics that show the prices paid for agricultural produce rose just 2% over the past decade while the cost of inputs like feed and fertiliser rose by more than 26%.

For those who work outside the agrarian field, some of the most fertile ground for pay increases last year was in the public sector, where average weekly earnings rose by 4.5% last year, compared with 3.2% in manufacturing industries and 1.7% in the construction industry.

When it came to spending, the signs of a slowdown last year, coupled with a rise in prices, didn’t stop us from flashing the cash. Overall, retail sales increased 7.8% during the year and bars, which complained about the drink-driving and smoking laws, showed their first real increase in business since 2002.

The motor trade also had its best year since the millennium — when demand for ’00 registration plates sent sales rocketing. Registration of new private cars increased 4.2%, with Toyotas, Volkswagens and Fords top of the popularity charts.

We might have been better off ploughing our money into pensions, however. While the number of workers with pensions increased 3.8% since 2002, almost half (45%) still had no provision for a pension last year.